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An election on the balcony of the ‘Russian world’

MINSK — Belarusians go to the ballot boxes Sunday to elect their president. It won’t be a European-style election. An unexpected outcome is out of the question.

The Central Election Committee chairman has been personally picked by President Aleksander Lukashenko, and its composition has remained unchanged since 1996, although since then observers with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe have not recognized a single election as free and fair.

Every election committee is appointed by the president’s administration. When votes are being counted the observers are kept so far from the tables holding the ballot papers that they cannot possibly see anything.

All students and workers are obliged to cast their vote early. It’s not difficult to guess why.

This is not an “election” but a “Lukashenko election,” goes a Belarussian joke. The 61-year-old Lukashenko has ruled the country for 21 years and the country has known no other president. He has been in office almost as long as Presidents Nazarbayev (of Kazakhstan) and Karimov (of Uzbekistan) and a little longer than President Putin.

That’s democracy in the “Russian world” for you.

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Every previous election in Belarus has turned into a battle for the freedom for the right to vote. In 2006 and 2010 the enormous squares of the capital Minsk were transformed into our version of Maidan, with crowds dispersed by special forces. However, it’s unlikely that a Maidan will happen this year. Not because of a fear of truncheons, but because of a fear of tanks.

This is the first election in Belarus since Crimea and the Donbas. A “Putin doctrine” has emerged loud and clear — Russia has the right to interfere in whichever country she regards as her zone of interest and whenever she deems it necessary.

Present-day Belarus is reminiscent of the limited sovereignty of the Soviet Union satellite states between the 1960s and 1980s. Unlike these countries, however, Russia regards Belarus as a part of “the Russian world” that has only accidentally broken off. Many people in Moscow believe that the incorporation of Belarus into Russia has to be the ultimate goal of the Eurasian integration, and that it’s just a question of finding the convenient moment for it to happen.

Aleksander Lukashenko | SERGEI GAPON/AFP/Getty Images

In terms of its geography, Belarus looks like a balcony jutting into the EU and hanging over Ukraine. The balcony boasts a lavishly decorated facade. Over the past 10 years, Russia’s annual oil and gas subsidies to Belarus made up some 15 percent of the Belarussian GDP.

The price the country has paid for the subsidies has been the dependency and periodic humiliation of the “vassal.” Even the loyal Belarussian leadership is tired of “the Russian world.” But Russia, even if weakened by low oil prices, is still dangerous enough.

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In facing this situation, the opposition to Russian domination has split into two camps.

The majority champions ignoring the election. Supporters of this option have gathered around Nikolay Statkevich. The 59-year-old retired rocket corps lieutenant colonel was the opposition’s candidate in the 2010 election, which ended in mass arrests. He spent five years in prison and was released only after the registration of this year’s candidates had been completed.

A minority holds the view that they should participate in the election, but only with a very moderate, conciliatory message, and without calling for mass protests. Their candidate is the pleasant but little-known NGO activist Tatyana Korotkevich. A psychologist by education, she has never held a leadership position. Her election slogan is: “For peaceful changes.”

Lukashenko has chosen a different slogan for this election campaign: “For the future of an independent Belarus.” This has set a new tone. His propaganda suggests that he alone, with his political talent and experience, can save Belarus from being devoured by Russia.

Even so, that possibility is still on the cards. Russia has earmarked specific areas of Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, and Belarus is a homogeneously russified country — a tempting prospect for imperialist designs.

Economic and human contacts between Belarus and Europe have begun to flourish but they have not yet gained sufficient strength. Before the election, Lukashenko released the last batch of political prisoners, removing the last obstacle for the suspension of EU visa restrictions.

Lukashenko’s interests can be summed up by a simple phrase: “Don’t tell me how to live, just give me material help,” as the protagonist of the cult film of his youth, “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears,” used to say. He has no intention of giving up power.

Nobody in Belarus expects things to change Sunday. Just as in the the former Soviet bloc of old, elections in Eurasian autocracies have stopped being the time when change happens.

At the moment, the only possible tactic on both sides — Lukashenko vis-à-vis internal opposition and Lukashenko vis-à-vis the EU — is that of taking small steps.

Andrei Dynko is an editor with the Belarusian online newspaper Nasha Niva / NN.BY. He was previously head of Belarus PEN. Julia Sherwood translated this piece from the original Russian.